English Environmental History

This book chronicles the creation of Everglades National Park, the largest subtropical wilderness in the United States. Prior to the park's creation, the Everglades was seen as a reviled and useless swamp, unfit for typical recreational or development projects. Park advocates drew on new ideas concerning the value of biota and ecology, the importance of wilderness, and the need to protect habitats, marine ecosystems, and plant life to redefine the Everglades. Using these ideas, the Everglades began to be recognized as an ecologically valuable and fragile wetland.

In this “first-rate work of historical research and storytelling” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review), four sites of American history are revealed as places where truth was written over by oppressive fiction—with profound repercussions for politics past and present. Popular narratives of...

Award-winning author Thom Hatch presents the definitive biography of George Bird Grinnell (1849-1938), who was recognized in his time as "The Father of American Conservation." This book chronicles not only Grinnell's life, but also offers a history of his accomplishments in saving the wildlife and natural resources of this country. A remarkable man, Grinnell was known as a model of intellectual diversity, integrity, and professional dedication.

The Arrogant Years has descriptive copy which is not yet available from the Publisher...

After 1991, international organizations from the Red Cross to Greenpeace sought to help the victims, yet found themselves stymied by post-Soviet political circumstances they did not understand. International diplomats and scientists allied to the nuclear industry evaded or denied the fact of a wide-scale public health disaster caused by radiation exposure. Efforts to spin the story about Chernobyl were largely successful; the official death toll ranges between 31 and 54 people. In reality, radiation exposure from the disaster caused between 35,000 and 150,000 deaths in Ukraine alone.

Nature on the brink? Maybe not. With so much bad news in the world, we forget how much environmental progress has been made. In a narrative that reaches from Native American tribal practices to public health and commercial hunting, Wild at Heart shows how western attitudes towards nature have changed dramatically in the last five hundred years. Humans can learn from the past, and our choices today will determine whether nature survives.

We're Doomed, Now What? addresses the crisis that is our time through a series of brilliant, moving, and original essays on climate change, war, literature, and loss from one of the most provocative and iconoclastic minds of his generation.

“A convincing case for Powell’s legacy as a pioneering conservationist.”--The Wall Street Journal "A bold study of an eco-visionary at a watershed moment in US history."--Nature A timely, thrilling account of the explorer who dared to lead the first successful expedition down the Colorado...

Mals, Italy, has long been known as the breadbasket of the Tyrol. But recently the tiny town became known for something else entirely. A Precautionary Tale tells us why, introducing readers to an unlikely group of activists and a forward-thinking mayor who came together to ban pesticides in Mals by a referendum vote, making it the first place on Earth to accomplish such a feat, and a model for other towns and regions to follow. For hundreds of years, the people of Mals had cherished their traditional foodways and kept their local agriculture organic. Their town had become a mecca for tourists drawn by the alpine landscape, the rural and historic character of the villages, and the fine breads, wines, cheeses, herbs, vegetables, and the other traditional foods they produced.

Throughout the centuries, the Amazon has yielded many of its secrets, but it still holds a few great mysteries. In 1996 experts got their first glimpse of one: a lone Indian, a tribe of one, hidden in the forests of southwestern Brazil. Previously uncontacted tribes are extremely rare, but a...

The environment, and the movement that grew up to protect it, is under attack, concerted and purposeful. Yet the need for solutions to pressing environmental problems grows more urgent each day. Teresa Heinz Kerry and Senator John Kerry traveled across the country in a national campaign to see at first hand how these issues unite people across party and ideological lines.

Set in Appalachian coal country, this “superb” (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette) legal drama follows one determined lawyer as he faces a coal industry giant in a seven-year battle over clean drinking water for a West Virginia community. For two decades, the water in the taps and wells of Mingo...

Kendra Atleework grew up in Swall Meadows, in the Owens Valley of the Eastern Sierra Nevada, where annual rainfall averages five inches and in drought years measures closer to zero. Kendra's family raised their children to thrive in this harsh landscape, forever at the mercy of wildfires, blizzards, and gale-force winds. Most of all, the Atleework children were raised on unconditional love and delight in the natural world. But it came at a price.

Given the daunting, dire predicament in which we find ourselves on this planet, what is described by social critic James Howard Kunstler as a "Long Emergency" may in fact become a "Last Emergency" for humanity. Whether we encounter a "long" or a "last" emergency, Carolyn Baker seeks to offer...

From the age of dinosaurs to the first human cities, a groundbreaking new history of the planet that tropical forests made. To many of us, tropical forests are the domain of movies and novels. These dense, primordial wildernesses are beautiful to picture, but irrelevant to our lives. Jungle...

"Every year, our planet loses over 150 species of plants and animals, and India is very much in the midst of this mass ‘sixth extinction’. We are losing species in our backyard—where are the once ubiquitous sparrows, or the fireflies that lit up our nights? And in the forests, iconic...

A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice | A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of the Year In the tradition of Katherine Boo and Tracy Kidder, The Hungry Season is a “lyrical” narrative with "real suspense" (New York Times): a nonfiction drama that “reads like the best of...

As in all his books, Heckler draws from personal experience: training his horse, cultivating presence in aikido dojos, consulting with business executives, raising children. A masterful and encompassing book, Holding the Center develops from the fulcrum of the self in the natural world. Many of...

With the current administration pausing funding for agricultural projects and farming support, the issues discussed in this book are more urgent and relevant than ever before. The system of agriculture needs to be reimagined. This book is the best place to begin. There’s no denying it: we...

The Pasagoula River is the largest unobstructed river in the continuous United States. Because of this lack of restraint, the river has been left to rise and fall naturally with the seasons, overflowing annually into the adjoining bottomland surrounded by some of the most ecologically diverse woodlands, in North America. Herman Murrah lived his entire life on the banks and in the swamp surrounding this river in southeast Mississippi. In this book, Herman's son Davy details the adventures that continue to inspire young conservationists in the fight to protect our remaining natural ecosystems.